Tune in this Friday! From John Stossel:
This Friday (10 p.m. ET), I get the entire "20/20" hour for a special: John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics
There's tremendous excitement about this year's election. People say that their candidate will fix America. Barack Obama inspires idol worship that's usually lavished on rock stars. At the Republican convention, one man told me John McCain was like Superman.
Give me a break. Obama and McCain would have to be a combination of Superman, Santa Claus and Mother Teresa to do what their supporters say they will do. Even if they were, politicians cannot direct our lives and solve our problems. This faith in political solutions thrives in the face of repeated government failure:
Big farm bills have raised the price of food and squeezed out small farms.
Campaign finance reform has made it harder to challenge incumbents.
FEMA can't deliver water to a hurricane-ravaged New Orleans as well as Walmart can.
Medicare has a $35 trillion unfunded liability.
Politicians' "fixes" usually make things worse. Yet the media and the political class call for more government control. Do we really need a president to plan our lives? No. Most of life works best when YOU are in charge.
David Boaz, senior vice president of the Cato Institute, points out that most change doesn't come from politicians. "It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer -- all those kinds of things didn't come from government. They came from people. Most of life -- our families, our romances, our jobs, our travel, our learning -- is outside the government sector. We think sometimes of government as being so important -- and it can interfere in our lives in a lot of ways -- but if the government just protects us from rapists and murderers and foreign armies, and leaves us alone to run our own lives, we'll be better off."
Amen to that.